Walter Palmer (left) and an unidentified man with a slain lion (not Cecil).Facebook

They had been tracking the lion on foot for hours, and now, under a scorching Kalahari Desert sun, the king of beasts stood a mere 25 yards away.

“The lion’s looking at me,” recalls John Martins, 50. He edges closer. The lion growls. The two native trackers and the professional hunter who accompanied Martins urge him to fire. “They told me, ‘You better shoot or he will charge.’ ”

Walter Palmer

The Florida entrepreneur carefully draws his arrow back and aims. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and the lion’s got to do what he’s got to do.”

The arrow finds its mark in the lion’s chest. “If you hit him in the heart, he will probably run 50 yards and then drop dead. If you hit him in one lung, he might run 20 yards and then lie down and wait for you . . . An African lion with a big mane . . . it’s hard to pick a target,” he says.

“It took a few arrows to finish that job,” admits Martins, who paid a $24,000 trophy fee for killing the prized cat.

“It’s the most dangerous thing I ever did.”

It’s that danger that attracts thousands of Americans to Africa each year for hunting safaris, where lions, elephants, zebra and rhinos are all fair game, for the right price.

Walter Palmer is seen with his various kills.Flickr

“The African lion is a very dangerous animal. It will kill you,” says Martins, who prefers hunting with a bow for the extra challenge. “And that gives it kind of an adrenaline rush. You can call it thrill-seeking.”

Martins and other hunters now worry the thrill is gone after Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer illegally killed a beloved Zimbabwe lion named ­Cecil.

He does, however, forgive Palmer for fleeing back to the United States. “I wouldn’t want to be a white guy in a prison in Zimbabwe. They don’t have enough food to feed their guards, much less a prisoner.”

Unlike Palmer, whose guides allegedly lured Cecil out of his safe haven at Hwange National Park and onto private property using an animal carcass, Martins and his peers say they practice ethical — and legal — hunting.

“We don’t shoot animals that are lying down, we don’t shoot animals at water holes, and we don’t normally shoot them coming out of national parks,” explains Martins, who sells lion hunts adjacent to the park where Cecil was killed. “It’s considered unethical to bait near a park.”

Cecil the lionZumaPressA protester outside Palmer’s office in Minnesota on July 29.Splash NewsChildren place stuffed animals at the doorway of Palmer’s office to protest Cecil’s killing.Reuters

Martins boasts that he has shot five of the “dangerous seven” — a lion, leopard, buffalo, hippopotamus and crocodile.

“I’m still missing a rhino, and I will not kill a rhino,” he says. “Rhinos are endangered. And I haven’t taken an African elephant, yet. I probably will at some time.

“I’m not going to shoot something that I’m not going to bring back as a trophy. And if [the animal] is endangered I’m not going to take one of those. So that’s my contribution to conservation.”

Tourists legally kill about 600 lions a year, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature found in 2009.

But Chris Mercer, founder of Campaign Against Canned Hunting, says that the number is higher and that 1,000 lions a year are killed in South Africa alone. He argues that even if the hunts are legal, it doesn’t mean they are right — especially on “canned,” or fenced-in, hunting grounds.

“There are more than 200 lion farms in South Africa breeding ­lions for no other purpose than for being shot,” Mercer says.

“Your canned lion hunters are a different category. [The hunter] will fly out with his family and be picked up and be taken to a five-star lodge. He will already have bought his animals,” Mercer says. “He will have his rhino by 3 p.m. . . . In the evening, after he’s taken the animals, which are being set up for him like [bowling pins] to knock down, he and his family will go to the nearby casino to spend the evening gambling. He’s not a hunter at all. He’s just a collector. And he doesn’t care how much bloodshed and misery he causes in order to get his trophy.”

But Annette Williamson, a 56-year-old Texas farmer who has been on four hunting safaris in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Tanzania, stands by the economic and environmental benefits of her hunts.

“I’m telling you, no one loves hunters more than the communities around the concessions because it is an unbelievable source of revenue for them,” says Williamson, who started hunting 12 years ago after deciding she “wanted a little bit more” than the standard photographic safaris she had been on.

The average cost for each of her hunting safaris, she says, ranges from $35,000 to $55,000 per person. Some of that money goes to protecting animals in national parks, like Cecil, as well as the ­local communities.

Zumapress

“They get the meat, the organs. Hunters come to their clinics and schools. It provides jobs,” ­Williamson says.

Martins, who has been going on once-a-year, 30-day safaris since 2010, insists his hunting aids conservation.

“The [human] population of ­Africa is rapidly expanding. It’s expected to triple by the end of the century,” he says. “They are moving out to rural areas, and the wealth in these rural villages is cattle. So here comes Mr. Lion, and all the small game has been taken out of there [by the villagers], and he sees this tasty cow coming by. What do you think he’s going to do?

Williamson goes so far as to say that hunting safaris “make me a better person because I can appreciate what animals like an eland need. After you’re tracking an individual on foot for seven hours, you begin to appreciate how that animal thinks.”

While Williamson and Martins consider their hunting expeditions contributions to conservation efforts in Africa, Martins ­admits that adding to his trophy collection is a big motivator, too.

John Martins

“I’ve probably had 40 or 45 animals stuffed,” explains Martins, who is currently erecting a building to house his collection, which, he says, is very selective.

“Over the course of the years, I’ve let thousands of animals walk by me unscathed . . . If I shot ­every animal in Africa that I saw, I’d fill a Superdome,” he says.

The typical hunting safari ranges in length from seven days to 21 days for more dangerous game like lions. It can cost $3,000 to $75,000, not including extra fees — four to five figures — for each animal killed.

Hunts begin at dawn after a light breakfast. “You don’t eat a big meal before a marathon,” ­explains Williamson. You ride in a vehicle with the trackers and an almost always mandatory “PH” (professional hunter).

“You’re not talking; you’re walking in a single file” looking for footprints or feces, says Williamson. Even the slightest misstep and the “birds give you away, the monkeys give you away, the impalas give you away.”

The hunters, garbed in green, brown or neutral-colored clothing, break for lunch and a siesta at camp, before returning in the late afternoon.

“The exhilaration is from the stalk . . . and trying to figure out a way the animal doesn’t see you,” Williamson says. “Most people know, the actual squeezing of the trigger is the least favorite part of the whole thing.”

Martins agrees. “Some people get excited when they shoot something. I don’t get excited. I revere the animal. It’s mixed emotion. I’m happy I took the life, but I revered the life of that ­animal also.

Some people get excited when they shoot something. I don’t get excited. I revere the animal.

- John Martins

“Sitting down next to an African lion you’ve just taken is a very emotional thing. It’s a terrific accomplishment for a hunter. It’s a moment that you will never forget.”

Once the animal is killed, a trophy photo is taken.

“It’s funny because the guides and trackers and the scouts, they all go from being these amazing bushmen and naturalists, and they become art directors, pushing the animal around and fixing your hat and getting the leaves out of your hair,” Williamson says. “For them, the fact that you had a successful hunt means that they did their job.”

After the photos are taken, the kill “goes to a skinning shed where it is skinned and fleshed and put into the salt to dry,” says Martins. “From there it goes to a dip and pack facility and treated by a vet to certify it and make sure the permits are correct and prove that it’s disease free.”

The meat is often given to the local hunters and the villagers. As for the rest of the animal, it’s sent to a shipper, who crates it up and sends it back to the States to a taxidermist.

Martins says it’s unfortunate that one bad apple like Palmer risks ­ruining a tradition that “has been passed down . . . It’s in my DNA.”

Martins has even received death threats of his own, but says avid hunters can’t let what he calls the “keyboard cowboys” win.

“With all this noise about hunting lions, we’re afraid they’re ­going to shut us down at some point,” Martins says.